


The Measure of Grace (1/1)

by eldritcher



Series: The Song of Sunset Third Age [10]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 02:19:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4002148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritcher/pseuds/eldritcher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Long after the events of Forbearance, before they sail west, Elladan and Legolas travel to Lothlorien one last time. Under the golden leaves where their relationship was born, can they renew what they once had, or will it always be mere pretence?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Measure of Grace (1/1)

‘The Measure of Grace’

Pairing: Elladan/Legolas

 

Long after the events of Forbearance, before they sail west, Elladan and Legolas travel to Lothlorien one last time. Under the golden leaves where their relationship was born, can they renew what they once had, or will it always be mere pretence?

The story is almost preachy in its tones. Bear with me. I am not very good with the 3rd age.

The Elladan/Legolas story arc in Sunset ranges from [The Inception](http://j-dav.livejournal.com/56760.html), [Lowering the Shield](http://j-dav.livejournal.com/tag/lowering+the+shield), [Forbearance](http://j-dav.livejournal.com/tag/forbearance) and finally, [The Measure of Grace](http://j-dav.livejournal.com/tag/the+measure+of+grace).  


* * *

“I am looking forward to seeing Arwen,” Lindir was saying, as he rode beside me.

We were going to Lothlórien, to take our leave of Arwen. Our ship awaited us moored upon the banks of the Anduin. Eldarion’s rule was established in Gondor and Annuminas. Faramir’s descendants and Imrahil’s son guided the young King in the matters of state. Middle-Earth would flourish under the rule of Men.

Our time had passed a long time ago, when my fathers had sailed. Now we would leave, and carry with us memories of dear friends who had fought, ruled and fallen beside our people.

“A piece of silver for your thoughts, Lord Elladan,” Gimli said, as he held onto my waist for balance.

Riding with him was not as uncomfortable as I had feared it would be. He was on excellent terms with the horses despite his gruff negation of the same. Perhaps Laiqua had taught him some of his Sindarin ways with animals.

“I was merely trying to imagine how the place would look,” I waved a hand to encompass all of Middle-Earth, “say, after two hundred years.”

“Bless you,” Gimli laughed. “Why can’t you try to remember the place as it is now? That shall make you happier.”

“Now Lord Gimli has a point,” Elrohir said merrily, nudging his horse into step with Lindir’s, so that he could loop an arm around Lindir’s waist, a gesture that made me flinch at its easy familiarity.

I averted my head firmly, concentrating on the ridiculous shoes Eldarion had given as a parting gift. They had been made by Gondor’s finest cobbler and I had never worn anything so ornate and useless. Like Estel, his son had an unbelievably poor sense of choosing gifts.

“Missed me?” A clear, proud voice rose from the east. I sighed and turned to face Laiqua, pasting a welcoming smile on my face.

“Where have you been, laddie?” Gimli drawled. “We were thinking of riding after you into that creepy forest.”

“Greenwood is not creepy,” Laiqua said haughtily. “And no,” wistfulness and something else marred his features, “it was well you hadn’t come. The halls have caved in. The treeroots and the brambles have covered most of the old forest path.”

“Then I am glad that we are not returning to Imladris,” Elrohir said in a hushed voice, echoing my sentiment. I had no wish to see my childhood home turned into a rustic sanctuary of the past.

“I fear to ride to Lothlórien,” Laiqua murmured, as his horse fell in step beside mine. “The place holds much memory for me.”

“Indeed,” Gimli said quietly, “I will never forget seeing the White Lady for the first time in those woods. Such powerful grace was never in any other woman.”

“Oh, but there was!” Lindir exclaimed. “Éowyn of Rohan was a class apart from the rest. She was to the Men what Galadriel remains to us.”

Laiqua jerked at the mention of her name, and with good reason. He did not meet my eyes, but his fingers clenched tightly around his horse’s mane, and his jaw drew into a set expression. Gimli cleared his throat loudly and patted my shoulder in an obvious show of sympathy. Elrohir shot me a pitying glance before gently leading Lindir’s horse forward, speaking of this and that to his lover.

“Lord Elrohir, can I ride with you awhile?” Gimli called after Elrohir.

As a rule, Gimli rode only with Laiqua. But recently, after the events which caused us all such turmoil, he deigned to ride with me on occasion, considering that a show of solidarity. I blessed his existence and being with me during such times, for his honest, brutal brand of sympathy often served where inane condolences could not. Now, his decision to let us have privacy touched me, as did many other things he did. We underestimate his race. In my experience they have more sensitivity and loyalty than my own kindred.

“I shall be honoured,” Elrohir said, with a frank smile and helped Gimli mount.

They drew away deeper into the woods, their chattering voices mingling with the gurgle of the river, the coy whispers of the wind in the tall grass and the mating calls of the birds. I turned to face Laiqua, studying intently those features I have made my life’s purpose to memorize. His long fingers fluttered uneasily over the mane of his mount, betraying his deep emotional unsettlement. The carved jaw was slack, and the clear green eyes had turned murky as he negotiated a terrain too dangerous for me to contemplate guessing at.

“Was it very bad?” I asked him, knowing well that the absurdly proud creature would not open conversation even if we remained alone all day.

He flinched as if I had struck him, his eyes turning as round as the coins of Gondor. I cursed under my breath. He thought that I was asking about something else altogether. He need not have worried. I had vowed I would never ask. It was easier on both of us to pretend that had never happened.

“Was your journey into Greenwood very bad?” I modified my question.

His grip on the horsehair loosened and he sighed ever so slightly, letting his tension unwind. Then he began speaking in a jaunty tone, the same tone I had fallen in love with very long ago.

“There were no spiders, thank Eru!” he said. “But there were many new streams, with the River forming new tributaries through the forest. One of my old childhood haunts, where I would escape to be alone with myself, is now a marsh. I nearly sunk there, but for my doughty horse.”

“I did tell you that horses are more loyal than dogs,” I told him righteously, delighting in the faint glow of debate which livened his eyes.

He was younger than all of us; but he looked aged beyond his years. So did I. It was a question of loyalty that had aged me, a question I wished to forget.

“Mute beasts are more loyal than those that can speak,” he said quietly, such potent emotion lurking beneath the surface of his words that it was all I could do not to ride away and join my brother, leaving Laiqua alone to muse on loyalty.

“Lothlórien,” I said instead.

For it was. We had made the borders of the mystical woods where once my grandparents had ruled in its heyday. The trees were no longer golden, and the leaves that littered the forest floor crunched ordinarily underneath the hooves of our horses when once they would have gently whispered of secrets before giving way to riders and weary travellers. Lothlórien had lost its magic when it had bid farewell to its enchantress.

“I can imagine my father rushing across these very plains, weary and ragged, and my mother mounted on a white stallion, waiting for him at the fringes of the golden forest,” Laiqua whispered softly, his eyes reverent as they gazed upon the woods. “They must have bonded somewhere here.”

“The treelines have receded, it is said,” I said quietly. “But yes, Thranduil and Anoriel spoke their vows on the boundaries of the forest, before the entire host of elvendom that returned from the Last Alliance.”

“It must have been a sight,” he said awed, his eyes darkening as he imagined the scene.

“It was,” I cleared my throat. “They were deeply, madly, passionately in love with each other.” Thranduil had loved her so much that he had not cast even a shade of infidelity over their marriage vows. Even after her death, he had remained faithful to her.

Laiqua sighed and pulled his hood over his head, obscuring his features. I did not remark on his unwillingness to meet my gaze. We rode into the forest silently. For my part I was overwhelmed by memories; each inch of soil held a trace of my past. Here my grandparents had fought and loved, here my mother had spent her youth, here I had celebrated my coming of age and rashly propositioned Thranduil’s wife, driven by the recklessness of hot blood. And lastly, here it was that Laiqua and I had first made love, on a starry night many years ago. We had declared oaths of fealty and fidelity, and I had foolishly believed his.

“I fear that I might disturb the memories if I speak in more than whispers,” Laiqua murmured, falling by to let me pass first along the narrow path that led deeper into the heart of Lothlórien and into the deserted city of Amdir.

“But memories can be disturbed only by our actions of the present,” a woman said quietly, coming upon us as the stealthy breeze from the north.

“Grandmother!” Laiqua exclaimed, for it was Eleriel of Doriath, Queen of Amdir of Lorien.

“Lord Thranduillion.” She bowed, her worn features looking more haggard than the last time I had seen her, which had been during Anoriel’s funeral.

Laiqua dismounted and walked over to her, stating in incredulous awe, “You live yet.”

“It is not an easy task to die,” she said wryly.

I had never heard her speak before, I remembered. I had even forgotten that she had once existed. I fancy that I might even have remembered distinct trees of Lothlórien than her features. Her refusal to acknowledge Arwen had not helped my opinion of her.

“Come!” Laiqua exclaimed, undoing his cloak and wrapping it about her frame, “come with us. Where do you stay? Are there elves yet in Lothlórien?”

“Only my daughter and her minstrel remain of the Quendi,” she said bitterly. “The rest have all faded into memory.”

“Only three of you then,” I rectified her answer. There was something in her harsh tone that did not sit well with me.

She turned to face me before laughing and saying, “But I count not. Yet another of Finwëan blood. Suffer you in heart as they all did?” I stared at her aghast and she nodded solemnly, “It is your lot, young lord. Make the best of it. Perhaps my grandson will be worthier than I was.”

“Please don’t say so!” Laiqua said hoarsely, his green eyes shining in a strange manner, his hands clasped as he paced before her.

“His worth was never in question,” I said flatly, defending my lover ingrained into a basic tenet of my existence.

She looked at me meaningfully, but I was grateful when she let the remark pass. Laiqua took the lull to ask hastily, “What of Arwen? Have you mended your relationships with her, now that you are together?”

“Grace is not willed to everyone. I wait here, lurking and keeping vigil over their happiness, so that I might do what I can if he leaves first.”

“You cannot mean-” I began in pure shock, stunned by the hidden meaning concealed within her words.

“I mean that precisely. It is the only thing I can do for her,” she said dully, slipping away into the dark shadows of the woods she had emerged from.

“But it is not your right!” I called after her in alarm.

“I did give birth to her, and I have a right to her life.” With those final words, she disappeared, leaving us standing on the path, staring at the taunting darkness she had been swallowed by.

“Grandmother!” Laiqua called, again and again, until his voice was hoarse from the effort.

She did not return.

“Will she be all right?” he asked me finally, his discomposure showing clearly in the faint sunlight that permeated through the green canopy above.

I did not reply. It was a rhetorical question, after all.

* * *

 

“Elladan!”

Arwen laughed as she embraced me, her full form and twinkling eyes doing much to lighten me than anything else in the recent past had. She was the embodiment of happiness, having found her peace at last.

Elrohir chuckled indulgently as Laiqua twirled her about. Daeron was courteously speaking with Gimli, discussing the finer points of the caves of Menegroth.

“Is Eldarion well?” she asked me, as she pressed a simple wooden bowl of fruits into my hands. “My heart tells me that he is.”

“Well, if your heart tells so, then it must be certainly right,” I laughed, “especially since your heart’s speculation was corroborated by our eyes.”

She smiled, a dazzling sight that was akin to stars alighting on this sorry earth. When Daeron began singing merrily, his eyes ever on her; she rose to her feet and pulled Gimli for a dance. He was a refined dancer, primarily because of Éowyn’s insistence that he had it in him to become a better dancer than her clumsy brother. I cursed her, and tried to wipe away all thoughts of her. Must she haunt me ever?

“What is it?” Laiqua asked me solicitously, daring to sit beside me and leaning in to take a bite out of the pear I held.

Had he done the same with her? It was an unfair thought and an unsafe avenue to venture into. I smiled at him and placed my hand on his thigh, wanting him to believe that nothing had ever changed since the first time he had made glorious, inexperienced love to me under these very trees.

* * *

 

We retired early, for we were worn weary by the long journey we had. Gimli remained awake, regaling Arwen with tales of Eldarion’s mishaps in Gondor. Elrohir too had lingered awhile, and spoken with her alone, while Daeron had led the rest of us to a stream so that we might perform our ablutions.

“What has you in such gloomy spirits?” Arwen asked me as I turned to follow Laiqua for the night. He had scouted ahead with Daeron for a place that would lend us privacy enough.

“Arwen, please tell me how you can bear it.” My reserve collapsed in upon itself. “Knowing that Daeron will never love you as he loved Luthien.”

“Daeron loves me more than he loves the phantasm of Luthien,” she said haughtily, her eyes shining in such deep conviction that I had no recourse but to believe her. “And Laiqua loves you more than he loved her.”

I was more grateful to her than I could say, for she had not spoken aloud the name which had caused me such grief. But the rest of her words, I did not know if they stood proved.

“How can you be sure?” I begged.

“There are no sureties in love,” she said, looking up at the gleaming, white orb of the moon which gazed down upon us.

I shook my head and implored her with my eyes, wanting more desperately than anything else some sign that I had always mattered more to him.

“But there are unmistakable signs. Rest easy, you are loved, and you are loved above all else,” she said quietly. “It is evident in his eyes. This I swear.”

I smiled, wistfully hoping that I could believe that. I had believed once, and it had turned out to be life’s cruel jest at my expense.

“Elladan!” Laiqua called, concern lacing his melodious voice.

“I come!” I called back, turning to bestow a chaste kiss on Arwen’s forehead before making my way to him.

* * *

 

I fell asleep by his side, my mind easier after the conversation I had with Arwen. Somewhere in the course of the night, I woke abruptly, my hand moving to my dagger of its own accord, every sense attuned to the feeling of being watched. My first concern was for Laiqua. I turned to face him and found emerald eyes gazing at me with such intensity that I faltered and shifted back uneasily.

“Laiqua?” I asked, worried by his unnerving gaze.

“Hush!” he hissed and then prompted me into complying by bearing down upon me, his lips hot and unyielding as they assaulted mine. We had not been intimate for many years, having gradually fallen out of the activities. It was nothing unprecedented. Desire wanes after a time for a few, according to those who study the nature of flesh. Maybe we were among the few.

But he burned, he burned as the searing summer of Gondor, his lips blazing a trail of fire as they moved over mine, commanding me to yield and yield willingly. I gasped for breath and dug my fingers into his scalp as he delved his tongue and began a duel with mine, fighting passionately, withholding and sparing nothing. His legs pressed into my thighs as he crouched above me and the grip of his hands was painful when they clenched my face, as if fearful I would simply melt away into the air if he let go.

The passion flattered me, and it angered me. How dared he! I pushed myself up and fought him off, none too gentle with my hands as I threw him to the side. He rolled over and knelt, again seizing my face in his hands, fanatic eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

“Don’t!” I shouted.

He let his hands fall away and slumped into a seated position, drawing his knees to his chest and burying his face in his hands. An overwrought sigh escaped him as I clumsily rose to my feet and brushed myself clean of our animal passion.

“Have I lost the right?” he asked me softly, his voice muffled by his fingers.

“You threw that away,” I said bitterly, letting my hurt override my common-sense for once. Too long and too silently had I weathered, seeking to spare him the worst of it. I was tired.

He wrung his hands and rose to his feet, his green eyes hued by a thousand emotions that wrenched my heart. But I steeled myself, remembering all that I had borne in cursed silence. I could not afford to pity him now.

“It is the end then?” he asked, his brave tone offset awfully by the horror in his eyes. Those eyes had always been my friends, for they had never lied to me even when his voice had.

“I think it must be.” The words cut deep, deeper than I ever shall acknowledge. But I had to say them. I had to make him understand at least a hundredth of the wretched phenomenon that was loneliness.

“Who is it?” He had moved a step away, unaware of the figure he cut in the cold moonlight, every limb in his body taut and poised to flee like a skittish hart.

“Who is it?” I laughed coldly. “Was there ever anyone else for me? I honour the sanctity of pledges made.”

He uttered a sound, half-way between a sob and a groan and then in a flurry of limbs, he had embraced me, his mouth quivering in emotion as he kissed my cheek, clutching him to me as if I were an anchor to land him safely ashore from the perilous sea.

“You cannot use fornication as a means of persuasion,” I said brokenly. “The time for that is long past.”

“This is not fornication,” he swore as he began untying the laces of my tunic, heeding little for their safety in his haste.

“Then what is it?” I asked, feeling too weak to stay his folly.

He met my gaze, his own dark with fanatic passion, and I could only drown in them as he whispered, “Let me love you, Elladan. Let me love you one last time.”

I lost my power of speech then. The moon stared unblinkingly at us as I surrendered into his touch, letting him consume my wretched heart from within again, willingly tearing down the defences I had built about my love, pleading with him to never, ever stop. He responded as he had never done before, his low cries and guttural moans frightening me with their intensity. He whispered in Quenya, the language his father had first taught him. My knowledge of the tongue was poor at its best, as I had solely learnt it for spying on my parents. But even my paltry vocabulary sufficed to tell me what he raved of.

“Please,” he was imploring to the deities that only he seemed to believe in, “please, please forgive me.”

When he moved over me, his hands clutching my shoulders in a paroxysm of desperate need, his eyes clenched shut against my gaze, his sweat pouring down his torso onto mine, his pain transforming itself into desire as he filled me, I whispered again and again that it was over. He did not listen to me.

He continued imploring the deities, begging them for forgiveness. I could discern my name and her name in the string of garbled words he spoke. I would have travelled past the circles of the world to obtain forgiveness for him if I could, for so heartbreaking was his plea.

With a broken sob, he climaxed and then fell atop me, clutching me to him with deep desperation, his eyelashes wet as they brushed the crook of my neck. I petted his back and stroked gently, muttering sweet nothings to soothe him. It was all in vain. He devolved into a series of shudders, each more painful than the previous to watch.

“Laiqua,” I begged him. “Please, enough.”

“Don’t leave.” He dug his nails into my torso, making me gasp in pain. We heard unvoiced what he had left to say. Then he said it bravely, “Don’t leave me.”

“Laiqua.”

My voice was broken, so broken that I knew I would face a total loss of composure if I heard him say that once more.

He pushed himself up with great effort and fixed his eyes on my waning need. Resolution sharpening his face, he rolled over to the ground and pulled me atop him, his intent clear by his actions.

“We needn’t do this,” I said gently. “It is forgotten; all of it.”

“I beg you; have me any way you wish. I care not, as long as I can touch your shadow.”

It must have been the most painful words he had ever uttered in life, so abhorrent was a loss of control to him. He was his father’s son, and more. Not for him were sweet speeches of passion and love. Not for him were admittances of need and dependence. But that night, he lifted his hands to cup my face and a single tear whispered its way down his cheek as he murmured my name over and over again.

“You fool,” I cursed him as I fell atop him and kissed him madly, tasting of his need and loneliness. “You thrice damned fool. Why did you throw away everything we had for her?”

He broke in my embrace, his trembling frame so cold that I feared I would never be able to warm it with mine. Harsh, painful to hear sobs escaped him; dry and wracking in their sincerity. I held him to me and rocked him, twining our legs together in the easy familiarity of the past.

“It is all right,” I said. “It is all right. I shouldn’t have asked. It all happened so long ago.”

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered. “I know I deserve nothing. But I would throw myself off the nearest cliff than face the prospect of losing you.”

“I am not leaving you,” I said. “You needn’t make such grand proclamations to make me stay.”

Tension oozed out of every pore of his body, leaving him as limp as a puppet in my hands. His eyes fluttered close and he buried his head under my jaw, a kiss to my breastbone his only acknowledgement of my words. I settled myself by his side and drew him close within my embrace. His bones jolted my body as he tucked his arms in drowsily. I suppressed a sigh of guilt; he had been wasting away and I had been wallowing in my self-pity to even notice.

The dark circles about his eyes, the bony fingers that clasped my own and the utterly exhausted sleep he slept now, all testified to his slow deterioration. Guilt and regret had eaten him inside out even as grief and the pain of betrayal had caused my waning.

“A right pair we make,” I muttered before drifting into my dreams, which were decidedly pleasant for the first time in many years.

* * *

 

 

“Spread the sails, raise the mast, pile on the coals and steer left!” Laiqua was in his element as he directed the ship from his position in the middle of the deck.

Clad sprightly in a cream tunic and black leggings, he was the most delectable sight I ever had the fortune to look upon. His flaxen hair was aglow in the shining summer sun, teasing me ever so brazenly as he raked his long fingers through it in concentration while reading his charts.

“I hadn’t known he was a mariner,” Gimli was chuckling, lifting his head from the pail between his knees.

“Are you feeling better?” I pushed up a stool and sat beside him, proffering a mug of ale in my hands.

“I shall not look at the stuff until we land wherever we are meant to,” he huffed. “Nasty thing. It quite upturned my appetite and that’s no little feat.”

“Our rations shall last longer then!” Elrohir called out from the other end of the deck, where he was standing with Lindir.

“They most certainly shall not,” Laiqua remarked off-handedly, venturing to my side, looking so nonchalantly handsome that it was all I could do not to fall at his feet and compose a rapturous ode to his charm.

“Whyever not?” Gimli asked wearily, the seasickness having sapped him of his strength considerably.

“I plan to indulge in very many activities within my chambers that shall whet my appetite…and Elladan’s.”

“Indeed? Then why are you remaining on deck?” Elrohir teased. “Your cabin awaits, my prince.”

Laiqua smiled at him and then turned to face me, his face solemn and anxiously hopeful. I rose to my feet and pulled him to me, murmuring a prayer of gratefulness before leaning in for his kiss.

Despite Elrohir’s wager with Gimli that we would not make it to our bed, we did. Laiqua pushed me down upon the soft coverlet and shifted back to his haunches, peering at me so intently that I coughed and asked him if I had turned into a sea nymph suddenly.

“No,” he said simply. “I was wondering what the apt measure to weigh grace is.”

“Grace?” I asked, nonplussed. “Grace is not a word used in the bedchamber, particularly when applied to those of our preferences.”

“You,” he leant to press a kiss to my brow, “are,” he kissed my temples one after the other, “the personification,” he kissed my lips chastely once, “of grace.” He ended by kissing me on my lips gently again.

“You are getting maudlin in your old age,” I whispered, too taken aback by his words to compose a better reply.

He did not respond, instead tracing my features with such devotion that I had to clear my throat to stave off the emotions that threatened to conquer me.

“Yours I am, and yours I shall stay, if you would only have me,” he pledged in a low, fierce voice that sent a frisson of conflicting emotions down my spine to the very tips of my toes.

“What would you have in return?” I asked, wondering if my heart would fail at the marvelous sight of his golden body spread languidly over me.

“Anything you care to give, anything at all.”

“Then it shall be everything.”

“Thank Eru!” he exclaimed, kissing my fingers one after the other.

“What does Eru have to do with us?” I grumbled.

Perhaps the grace of a higher providence was indeed upon us both, whatever name the force went by, for he stayed true to his pledge ever after, as did I.

* * *

Years later, he rode in to the courtyard of our home, his flaxen hair shining like spun gold in the light of the dusk sun. I smiled in welcome, trying to ignore the painful heat that blossomed within me whenever I saw him. His laugh faltered as he dismounted and met my gaze. I wondered what he had seen in my eyes. But the next moment, he was laughing again and I found myself ensconced in the warmest embrace I had ever known, his limbs all about me as he sought to meld into me without the slightest barrier of flesh, bone and being between us.

“Stay, stay!” I laughed. “Whatever are you doing? Don’t burrow into my clothes, you fool.”

“Get into our chamber,” he urged. “I want to express some very pressing feelings as soon as I may.”

“Of what nature are these feelings?” I could not resist teasing him, delighting in the sparkle of his eyes as the entire sky above Valinor was reflected in them.

“Of the most urgent nature. It would be scandalous if I were to lose my restraint here, in our courtyard!” he laughed. “Do come in!”

Later, much later, after he had professed his pressing feelings in so eloquent a manner that I had been moved to rapture, he lay by my side, an exhausted heap of golden preciousness, I sifted my fingers through his fall of hair, marveling at the many hues the crimson sunrays wove in the flaxen cascade. The colours played along on his unclad body too, rendering him into a statue crafted by the grace of a very benevolent higher providence.

For it was grace indeed that allowed us this immeasurable bliss.

* * *

 

 


End file.
